


Paterfamilias

by Miggy, Phoebe (Emeraldwoman)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-06-06
Updated: 2005-06-06
Packaged: 2017-10-27 08:06:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/293533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miggy/pseuds/Miggy, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldwoman/pseuds/Phoebe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur Weasley discovers that no matter how limited the choices, the cost of using the enemy's techniques is too high.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paterfamilias

Arthur is against the plan from the beginning, but this is cold comfort by the end.

"We have no choice," Snape tells him.

"There's always a choice," he says. "I wouldn't wish this on any man." It's all men at the table. Minerva McGonagall has apparently agreed to the plan, but cannot take part. And Arthur would never involve Molly in this.

"Then the choice is between this and death," Snape snaps, and when Arthur looks around the circle of faces at the table, he sees that they all know he's right.

Arthur knows it too. They need something, some way to stop the relentless advance. The Death Eaters get new recruits every day, and the supporters of the Order of the Phoenix bleed away in a horrible and sometimes quite literal haemorrhage of support.

Voldemort might be obsessed with one boy, but his lieutenant is concerned with wider affairs, and has deployed Voldemort's forces with stunning strategy. It's him they have to stop.

Arthur wants to say something, about how winning shouldn't mean winning at any price, about how some choices are not the right ones. Something noble and fine and brave that would force them to find another option.

But all he manages is, "Dumbledore wouldn't have done this."

"If Dumbledore was still here," Remus Lupin says, gentle but inexorable, "We would not be forced to make this choice."

Arthur looks around the circle again. Dumbledore's face is not the only one missing. Nymphadora Tonks died unsuspecting when she opened the door to her flat and Kingsley Shacklebolt tore her murderers and himself apart with the fury of his counter-attack. Mad-Eye Moody took four Death Eaters with him, but he died all the same.

Arthur's boys, so far, have been lucky.

Arthur thinks about his family, untouched, and finds he cannot tell those who have lost so much that he, losing nothing, will stand in their way. Not when the fear of losing everything is so tight around his heart. Not when the hope of stopping everything, painlessly and quickly, is so close.

He makes the choice, and it is a conscious one, and it is this that haunts him later. He didn't understand the full extent of the choice, perhaps, but he thinks that he may have given up all hope at forgiveness when he consciously chose his own boys over Lucius Malfoy's only son.

* * *

Draco Malfoy has recently made an art out of concerning himself with unimportant issues. When his father was sent to Azkaban, he compensated by having his mother purchase the most expensive robes in Britain. The fine cashmere and silk thread was all the more impressive against the rationed materials to which those without unlimited funds found themselves resigned. Harry Potter being injured just before the November match allowed Draco his first win versus Gryffindor, and the school heard all about it for a full year.

The _Prophet_ has reported that Lucius Malfoy has escaped Azkaban. No, students correct, he escaped four months earlier. No, he's still there. No, he died and the guards are trying to feed the papers a cover-up.

Draco is constantly asked why he's still acting like the child of a single mother if his famous father is once again at large, or why Narcissa isn't remarrying to stabilise her position if Lucius really has kicked off. He directs the conversation back to Quidditch every time this question is asked.

All of this is in the dossier with which Arthur has been provided. Snape knows his favorite student well.

The bottom line of page four says that he always arrives at the Quidditch shed well ahead of his other teammates. He spends an inordinate amount of time preparing his kit for the matches, claiming that all the other positions are simple and clumsy versus the finesse of a Seeker.

Draco isn't surprised to see Snape enter the shed, but reacts quite harshly to the entrance of Arthur Weasley.

An hour later, the greatly reduced population of Slytherin lets out a cry of disgust when they must forfeit the match to Gryffindor. Arthur isn't there to hear this outrage, but Ron tells him about it later, triumphantly, because, "This year, Dad, Slytherin were the only real competition, so we've got the Quidditch Cup sewn up!"

"Do you know where Draco Malfoy could have gone?" Arthur asks, and makes himself meet his son's eyes. He has to look up to do this. Ron has grown so tall in the past year.

But Ron's eyes are clear and guileness. "Don't know, don't care," he says. "His foul father probably came and got him."

So Ron doesn't know what his own father has done, is doing, and this is some relief. Harry knows, because Harry needs to know everything about the Order's activities; everything, so that if Voldemort kills all of them but him, Harry can still be armed with the knowledge that might defeat him.

Harry has not told Ron, for whatever reasons of his own. And Arthur doesn't need to probe Hermione: if she knew anything about this, she would have already barged into his office and shouted at him until the whole plan came crumbling down around their collective ears.

* * *

Draco's room is comfortable, clean and absolutely devoid of anything that might make a weapon. Snape snapped his wand in half when they first grabbed him, and the boy is smaller than any of the three men who will be guarding him, and that's why Arthur objects when Remus chains him to the wall.

"It's a long chain, Arthur," Remus says patiently. "He can reach the bathroom and the bed."

"But not the door," Arthur says, and then feels foolish. That is, after all, the point.

He stares down at the boy huddled in the corner, whose grey eyes are filled with malice. "My father will come and get me," he claims. "He loves me." The last is defiant and hopeful and fearful, all at once.

Arthur's heart twists.

"We know," Lupin says, and takes a picture of Draco like that, crouching in the corner, chained to the wall.

"It won't be long," Arthur tells the boy, because surely Lucius will give himself up as soon as he gets that photograph. Any man would, to save his son.

He meant it to be kind, but any kindness seems ridiculous here. Draco's face creases as they file out.

"Don't turn out the lamp," he says quickly. "Professor... please!"

Snape settles in the armchair by the door. "I don't intend to," he says. "I have some reading to do." He retrieves a thick book from his pocket and opens it, seemingly absorbed by the material.

Draco stares at him, and it's that expression of total dismay and absolute betrayal that Arthur takes to bed with him that night.

* * *

He has managed to forget the boy's face by the morning, and works through paperwork at the office in a calm hum of productivity. The Ministry of Magic, even when at war, manages to insist upon triplicate this and double-signed that. His office is full of scrolls that don't need to be there.

Usually Arthur finds this incredibly frustrating, but today he is pleased to have something to do.

When the day is done, he Apparates to the cottage in Surrey where Draco Malfoy is hidden. No: was hidden, because surely the boy will be gone by now. It's been over a day. Surely Remus will be there to tell him it's done, it's over, they have Lucius and all his plans and the war will soon be done, a painful horror in the past.

Surely.

Instead, when he opens the door, he's greeted by the sound of Draco crying.

Remus is indeed there, reading in the chair by the door. "Oh, good, Arthur," he says in some relief, standing up and picking unhappily at the frayed edges of his sleeves.

"How long has he been doing that?" Arthur asks, and Remus winces.

"About an hour," he says quietly. A pause, then: "We haven't heard anything from Lucius. We need to take another picture."

Arthur feels his mouth twist. "All right," he says, and fetches the camera, aiming it at Draco's hunched back as he weeps into his pillow.

"Wait," Remus says abruptly and slides into frame, sitting on the bed beside Draco. He gingerly places one hand on Draco's shoulder. "Take it now."

Arthur almost has to admire him. Remus doesn't look threatening as he stares unsmiling at the camera. His hand is light, even gentle, on Draco's shoulder. But Draco's crying has stopped, and his spine is stiff with terror. Lucius Malfoy won't look at this picture and see his son with a kind and good man, a man who read stories to Arthur's own children.

He'll see his son in the hands of a werewolf.

* * *

Two days later word comes of a Death Eater offensive in Liverpool. Casualties are high on both sides, but Lucius' footsoldiers have far more numbers to eat away at. It's a tremendous victory or crushing defeat, depending on one's point of view.

In the tiny cottage they've been defeated twice over. Everyone there has lost at least one friend in Liverpool, and they now know Lucius Malfoy would rather see himself as a great and victorious general than a man with a son free of an agonising, disfiguring curse.

"It's not enough," Arthur says. The words are heavy with resignation.

"Indeed," Snape muses. His eyes are hooded.

Remus is quiet. He has been ever since he heard the full list of casualties and missing. Andromeda Tonks has yet to be heard from. Her daughter's death looks to have roused her to a renewed service of less than a month.

"He'll tell what we've done, you know." Arthur looks at the floor and feels his gut twist with shame. "As well he should. The minute he steps out of here-"

Snape's flat, disgusted stare makes him trail off. "We are not letting Draco go, Weasley. His father has not reacted to pictures of his son threatened but unharmed. The obvious course of action is to provide him photographic evidence of what we're willing to escalate toward."

Arthur can't find a reponse before Snape steps away to start making notes. He looks at Remus and only hears whispers about the dead and dying, and how everyone will soon be in one of the two categories. He doesn't have the strength to argue, but is tired enough to ignore the words.

Arthur spends most of the night awake. He doesn't know if he can go back the next day. But Charlie comes by for breakfast in the morning. Arthur watches Charlie's blistered hands fork up bacon and eggs and feels a love more fierce than his son's beloved dragons burn within him. Then Charlie is gone again, investigating rumours of banshees in Wales. Arthur makes his heart harden.

He turns up early. Snape is there. Snape is nearly always there. This time he has brought a collection of small vials neatly laid out on the bookshelf by the door. Arthur can't hear Draco in the other room, so he supposes he must be asleep. He can't help looking at those tiny, innocuous bottles, all with worn labels and yellowed wax around the corks.

Snape is on the other side of the room, looking out the window. His back does not welcome conversation, but Arthur tries anyway. "You don't need to spend so much time with him, you know." Arthur shoves his hands deep into his pockets. "That is to say... you're in a bit of a delicate position."

"Worried that my association with the Order will come to light among the Death Eaters, Weasley?" Snape gives him a thin, patronizing smile. "If young Mr Malfoy finds way to communicate with his father, I believe we'll have more to worry about than my past behavior."

"You care about the boy." Arthur snorts and adds in a low grunt, "For whatever reason." He tries folding his arms across his chest, then drops the hands back to his pockets and rocks back and forth. "So, ah, we can handle the talks with him. No need to have you do the dirty work. Not when he trusts you."

"Trusted, Weasley. He trusted me." Snape looks over at the row of bottles on the shelf. "Hand me the black one. The one that smells of nightshade."

Arthur can actually feel the blood draining out of his face. "You can't be serious."

Snape smiles, a cunning curl of lip. "I do not make jokes, Weasley. Lucius has not reacted to our communiques. The time has come to show him we're serious." Snape finally sighs in irritation and stalks over to get the bottle. "You can bring the camera," he says brusquely. "I trust you can do that, at least."

Arthur can.

Arthur takes the camera, and the pictures, and after they're done and Draco Malfoy's pale, terrified face, contorted with pain, has been impressed upon the paper, he goes home and takes rather a lot of whiskey. When Molly asks him how his day was, he shakes his head and says nothing.

The next day, head throbbing with hangover and memories of the night before, he takes the day off sick. He _is_ sick. This is enough, he thinks, desperate. Surely Lucius will respond _now_.

* * *

But he does not.

His silence makes what's left of the Order fearful, makes them angry, makes them hateful. Arthur would like to think that what they are doing is painful necessity, not ugly indulgence. Lucius Malfoy is ignoring their advances, their entirely just proposition, their last option, in the face of all their provocation. But his son is right there, and he cannot ignore them.

Lucius' silence drags on, and on, for nearly a week, and by then Arthur's nerves are wound as tight as Draco's screams.

Arthur never actually administers the potions. Snape reserves that for himself, with Remus to hold Draco still. Arthur only takes the pictures.

But he tries not to look at Draco, unless it's through the lens.

* * *

Then Harry drops by. Arthur can't believe it when he arrives and Harry is there in the outer room, looking at potions as Remus cooks Draco's supper. Soup, because they can force that down his throat more easily.

"Harry," he says weakly. "You shouldn't be here. You don't need to see this."

"But I need to know," Harry says, and Remus echoes him, looking unutterably weary.

Then Harry starts asking questions, and Arthur realises that Harry is not motivated solely by duty.

Harry _wants_ to know. He wants to know everything. "Did you do this to Bellatrix Lestrange?" he demands. "Did you do this to her, when you caught her?"

Arthur feels his face pale again. "Harry, no," he says quietly. "Of course not."

"Pity," Harry tells him.

"You don't mean that," Arthur says, and he's staring at the boy he thinks of as his youngest son and wondering if he knows him at all.

Then Remus Lupin says "Yes, he does," and his lips are drawn back from his teeth, and Arthur wonders if he knows him either.

After that, Arthur won't let Harry take a watch like the rest of them, but he can't stop him from visiting when the mood takes him.

The mood takes him quite often.

Harry always looks dismayed when he enters the room. No, Arthur corrects himself: "dismayed" doesn't account for curiousity, and endows the moment with too much guilt. Harry looks distracted.

"What does that one do?" he asks Remus a few days later, gesturing to a half-full bottle of yellow oil. The day before, the cork still had its seal.

Remus doesn't respond until Harry repeats the question. "Blood," Remus finally says in a tight, quiet voice. "It's an emetic of sorts, but it mainly results in blood being coughed up."

"Oh." Harry looks over to the door. His expression is cold. No; again, Arthur has to correct himself. His expression is perfectly and utterly neutral; warm emotions have not been replaced by darker ones. "With how pale Malfoy is, that must have been a good picture. What does it eat away at to cause the-"

"Harry!" Arthur barks.

When Harry looks over to him, Arthur barely recognizes the boy. For one terrible moment, he wants to list Harry Potter among the dead this war has caused. Surely the boy he knows - knew - doesn't have this icy, calculating nature lurking inside.

"Wishing you could administer the drugs yourself, Potter?" comes a new voice. They all turn to see Snape arriving, more bottles in hand. This round has turquoise and gold and pure, milky white. They could have been beautiful, if Arthur was ignorant of their purpose. "This seems like a perfect moment for that old saying to come into play: 'like father, like son.'"

Remus manages to break them up, but when Arthur comes in the next day, Harry is walking out, half the gold potion is gone, and Snape is nowhere to be found. He can't find the strength to think on whose fingerprints mar the glass.

* * *

Draco's heart stops that night.

They pound him back to life with spells, potions, and Muggle techniques. There's a quiet undercurrent of understanding between them as they file out of the room: they have to hold off until the tissues and neurons of their bargaining chip regenerate. Then, they'll see.

Arthur offers to stand watch for a while. He nods as they try to explain to each other and themselves that they hadn't realized how poor the boy's health had become. What would they measure it by: a sour expression, white skin, faded eyes? Snape's the only one not to search for a handle on the moment. As he watches the man excuse himself to his office, Arthur has a sneaking suspicion that Hogwarts' potion master is well aware of just how many toxins he's forced into the system of a seventeen year old boy.

Lucius Malfoy is intimidating. He always has been, even from a distance. He's taller and stronger than Arthur and never lets him forget it. Draco might look like his father, but he's sized to be a Seeker: he's frail. In the moonlight, Arthur can watch his pulse flutter under the stretched-thin flesh of his throat. It has yet to steady.

When he was just an infant, Fred became very sick and could barely breathe for how clogged his lungs were. Arthur had watched him all through the night, convinced his son couldn't die so long as he kept his fatherly gaze trained on the crib. As he watches the son of a hated enemy cling to life, he realizes only one word in that label matters.

* * *

When Remus relieves him later that night, Arthur finds Snape and finally asks him what Draco's done with his life. Not what his marks are, what his family's political connections are, or what skill he has on the Quidditch pitch; no, he wants to know what kind of man the son of his enemy is on the path to becoming.

Even with his strained affection, Snape's assessment is harsh. Draco is a spoiled, cruel, petulant child at the age of seventeen. He torments the weak and spreads hate as easily as self-congratulation. He is well on the track to join his predecessors in the Malfoy line as being a brutal killer.

No, Snape admits when Arthur asks him flat-out. He's demonstrated the capacity for evil, and comes from its line, but has yet to perform deeds to match up to his father's.

The next day, Arthur ventures into a far wing of the Ministry and locates papers detailing the bloodlines of the established wizarding families of Britain. He shuffles through the aged parchments until he finds a huge one listing dozens of surnames in its multitude of branches. Black is there, as is Weasley. He notes with a thin, pinched mouth where the Malfoy and Weasley lines met and diverged; potential shifted in two markedly different directions.

He finally locates the name he needs in the Malfoy line and progresses into a different room. These records are spotty. He's working on pure hope that they have what he needs.

After two hours of searching he locates a leather-bound volume listing prominent wizard families of Alsace. The French branch of the Malfoy line is centered around Strasbourg, or was in the early stretch of the nineteenth century.

A trip to a third room tells him that a safe, protected Portkey can put him in Colmar.

A conversation through flames convinces Remus and Snape to take the night off to clear their heads. He'll watch Draco the whole night. They need their sleep, after all, if they're to continue on this track much longer.

France is quiet, beautiful, and untouched; almost obscenely so, given how close this stone chateau is to a war zone. The family at the door has the familiar silvery hair and eyes, and they recognize their own in his arms, though he's almost completely concealed in Arthur's own cloak. "Lucius Malfoy's son," he explains. There's a short pause as they talk amongst themselves; he curses himself for never learning the language.

"Lucius," the man repeats with a scowl. A woman and her daughter help the still-groggy Draco inside as the man shakes his head in disgust. Branched potential, Arthur thinks with a smile as he remembers the family trees in the depths of the Ministry. If Lucius ever cares to claim his son, it does not appear as if these wizards will hand over their distant relation with the same easy disregard shown to him by his father.

He apologises to Snape and Remus the next day, and almost means it.

He refuses to apologise to Harry.

* * *

He sleeps well that night, warm and secure, with his wife's head pillowed on his chest.

The mail comes a little late that morning and Arthur doesn't recognise the owl that drops the envelope by his plate. His hands are full of toast and butter, so he gestures for Molly to open it.

Afterwards, he hates himself for that more than anything else.

She turns the envelope over. "No sender," she says, puzzled, then shrugs and slits the envelope open. A photograph tumbles out.

Arthur feels fear tighten around his heart. He drops the knife and reaches for the picture.

But Molly has already picked it up and seen it.

"No," Molly says, and hands him the photograph. Her voice is very calm. "Arthur, this isn't real."

Bill is staring at the camera with one eye. The other socket is mostly empty, a thick mess of jelly and blood dribbling down his cheek. The remaining eye is glazed and bloodshot.

Lucius Malfoy is standing behind him, a silver knife in his hand. He's smiling.

Arthur doesn't want to watch the rest, but wizarding photos move whether the watcher wills them still or no. Lucius lunges forward and stabs. There is blood, such a lot of blood, spraying over Lucius' pale skin, his eyes glittering through a red, red mask.

Bill's body falls out of the photograph's frame. Then it reappears, reset to the one-eyed horror of his still-breathing self. Lucius kills him again.

Again.

Again.

Arthur is aware that Molly is screaming beside him, that the other children are running into the kitchen, but he cannot help her. His eyes are only for Bill, his firstborn: the first of his children to die.

"My son," he whispers. "My son."


End file.
